martes, 15 de julio de 2008

Friend/Enemy is the new release from the confounding and prolific collective that brought us Cap'n Jazz, Joan of Arc and Owls. Spattering, loud, wild and moody. Lyrical twists forming scenarios previously unimagined.

Songs began with a loose foundation of guitar and vocal parts from Tim Kinsella and Todd Mattei and were built up from there with drums, bass, banjos, pianos and all manner of noisemakers and ghosts by this stellar group of musicians:

Tim Kinsella - guitars, singing, etc (owls, joan of arc)

Todd Mattei - guitars, singing, etc (joan of arc)

Jim Becker - pedal steel, banjo (paulina hollers, califone)

Caryn Culp - backing vocals (plastic crime wave)

Graeme Gibson - organ (mansion)

Emma Grace Ketner - backing vocals

Zac Hill - drums (hella, team sleep)

Andy Lansangan - electric piano, marimba (90 day men)

Nick Macri - bass (euphone, the zincs, sunny day real estate)

Chris Powell - drums, percussion, piano (need new body)

Azita Youssefi - piano (bride of no no)

Sam Zurick - bass (joan of arc, owls)

Recorded and mixed by Graeme Gibson at Clava and The Slabb, Chicago, November 2001 and January 2002.

viernes, 4 de julio de 2008

01. Size Of Your Life [03:09]02. Stop Playing Guitar [05:05]03. Suffer Never [04:11]04. Become One Anything One [04:19]05. Wake Until April [05:07]06. Get On The Floor [04:07]07. Half Year sun [05:40]08. My Life Is At Home [04:16]09. Letters To The Far Reach [02:29]10. Bread And Coffee [03:53]11. Say Goodbye Good [06:37]12. Feed The Night [03:04]

One wonders what would have happened if The One Up Downstairs had stayed together instead of splintering into American Football and Very Secretary. The band originally recorded a three-song 7" that was to be released by hometown label Polyvinyl but disbanded before the record was pressed, a move that indefinitely shelved the release. Singer Mike Kinsella and drummer Steve Lamos went on to form American Football, which released both a self-titled EP and a self-titled full-length on Polyvinyl. Guitarist David Johnson and bass player Allen Johnson went on to form Very Secretary with ex-Braid drummer Roy Ewing. Very Secretary released two albums through the Parasol imprint Mud. As American Football and Very Secretary gained popularity, so too did interest in The One Up Downstairs tracks. By the end of the millennium, however, both American Football and Very Secretary had broken up. Mike Kinsella went on to perform solo material as Owen, Steve Lamos went on to form The Geese and DMS, and David and Allen Johnson formed Favorite Saints. Nearly a decade after The One Up Downstairs' breakup, interest in the original 7" persisted. In 2006 the release finally sees the light of day via digital download.

viernes, 23 de mayo de 2008

Everyoned is an experimental group of sorts; it features some Chicago music-scene heavyweights from bands such as Pigface, Revolting Cocks, TVPow, Joan of Arc, The Owls, Town & Country and Central Falls- and that's just to name a few. The collaboration had been in the works for years- it seemed like everyone wanted to work with everyone else at some point and had been talking about it for years until they were finally all brought together in one space and began work.

Songwriting for Everyoned began in the spring of 2002, but labeling the creative process of Everyoned at the time as songwriting is perhaps something of a misnomer. Everyoned was a creative process that grew in fits and starts. Part of this had to do with the simple logistics of getting together: at any given time, as many as three of its members were recording or touring with one of their other bands. Another part of this process had to do with a deliberate move away from the structured, rehearsed song as each member had previously experienced it.When the planets aligned and everyone was in the same place at the same time, the creative experimentation and sound of Everyoned grew like something akin to algae on a pond- patches would amorphously form here and there...these patches eventually grew and shifted around a bit, swallowing smaller patches until the entire surface had been transformed into some larger organism with a new identity. Listeners can identify the hand of each of Everyoned's members in little bits and pieces scattered about the record, but they would be hard pressed to claim that any of the members' sound or personality has risen to assume the identity of the record. Even something as identifiable as Chris Connelly's singing has been transformed into something perversely different.

Tim has said that when the song writing began, their approach was something that had become something counterintuitive to all of them. Instead of writing a finished piece of music and then deconstructing it (or piling on the layers) until it had become that original song in its finished form, Everyoned worked the other way around. They purposely intended to write write no more than 2/3rds of a song- insisting on an emphasis on improvisation in their performance to define the song. Ben has suggested that the driving, almost jazz-like pulse of the songs is a direct product of the nervous creative energy that went into filling in the blanks of these songs as the members performed them on the spot. The results are gorgeously lush constructions of delicate guitar harmonies, swimming bass lines, textures of strings and keyboard sounds and only the simplest percussion. Combined with Connelly's beautifully warbling voice, the songs impart a dark, delicately driving moodiness.

Everyoned was formed as a collaborative effort, each member bringing their particular flavors to a series of recorded performances inspired by the magnificent Astral Weeks by Van Morrison and in part, by Miles Davis' In A Silent Way. These records have a few things in common: they feature an impressive lineup of professional musicans- each musician established in his/her own right and enjoying his/her own respective career; these records were recorded over a very short period of time in just a few intense sessions, focusing on the live, collaborative performances of the musicians set around a predefined structure of songs they were to perform. As a result, these records have a presence which marks them as powerfully unique in the careers of their collaborators.